The Cuckoo's have arrived.

I had given up on hearing the Cuckoo's this year but at last they have made it, six weeks later than last year, everything seems to be six weeks late,

1st Strawberries this year.

today I picked the first of our Strawberries, last year it was early in April, the other thing I have noticed is how tall the plants are, reaching for the light I suppose, the light density has been very low for weeks now and the temperatures are still struggling to make double figures.

A carpet of Bluebells.

The bluebells are now blooming, again six weeks later than last year. A lot of damage has been done to the plants and trees by late frosts and the easterly wind that we had for weeks.
The Irish Bee keeper association are predicting that there will be little or no Irish honey this year with an estimated loss of 76% of the hives. I have seen just two bumble bees and no hover flies at all, it is not looking good for crops that depend on insect pollination this year.
Whether the change in the climate is due to man or natural climate change or weather manipulation is anyone's guess. It used to be that the weather forecast could predict the weather for the next couple of days at least, now it seems it is impossible to predict more than a few hours in advance even  with all the technology that is around, maybe it's time to go back to the old seaweed method, at least that could predict a day ahead.

Sligo Co.

We had a trip to the neighbouring county a couple of days ago and although further north was far more advanced than where we live, presumably it is more protected by the mountains and is closer to the Gulf Stream.

Lough Arrow on a dull day.

Co. Sligo is a beautiful county, we always enjoy visiting it, it is full of magic. We lived there for a number of years, but we decided we wanted flatter ground as we were getting older.

Swan id the reeds.

This year there seems to be even more swans than other years I think we have two different types, I'm sure one of them is the mute swan the other ones either the Hooper or Bewick, I must read up on them, such beautiful creatures.
DIY road repairs. Any lingering doubts I had about our governments' sanity has now gone, the latest scheme they have come up with is community DIY road repairs, the councils will provide the material, a bit of gravel and if you're lucky some tar, the community to provide the labour and equipment to do the job. This scheme does not seem to have been well thought out, who would be responsible if a 'worker' injured his/herself ? And should the job not be carried out correctly and an accident occurred, again who would be held accountable? Considering we pay one of the highest road taxes in the EU, and we have been subjected to a property tax, and now the household charge, they now want free labour. I wonder what other scheme they can think of to squeeze more blood out of a stone. They could reduce unemployment or social welfare payments to people who grow their own food, this had actually been suggested some twenty years ago but thankfully came to nothing, however the State TV channel recently did a news feature on people in Dublin who were growing their own on allotments for which there is a waiting list, how long before some bright spark in the Dail decides this would be a good way to take money away from people who need it the most.
     

Glimpses of Summer.

The weather continues to be unpredictable or rather I should say it's predictably unpredictable. It might be the second half of May but temperatures are struggling, we wake up most mornings to brilliant HOT sun, our bedroom faces east, but by ten in the morning the temperatures have dropped. The sunroom temperatures start the day at 25c and by midmorning are down to 15c, outside it struggles to make double figures.

The wind also continues to blow, great for getting the washing dry but plants don't like continuous wind  the bulbs have all taken a sever battering. We have now invested in a second roll of wind break fencing which has helped to cut down the wind speed, once we manage to get our shrubs and trees established we will be able to re-use this netting elsewhere.

The fruit trees and bushes are now in bloom, however there is a lack of bees, we have a couple of regular bumble bees in the back garden but I'm not sure if they have found the fruit trees yet, we will assume that they have not and go round the trees with a soft paint brush to pollinate the blossoms.

As yet there are very few butterflies around, we have seen a couple of Peacocks and small whites but nothing more so far. We are also missing the sound of the Cuckoo, not one has been heard here.

We have seen a few Swallows passing through but none stopped to investigate our barns possibly they were put of with the amount of Crows, Ravens and Magpies that we have nesting close by. We have a pair of Magpies nesting in an ash tree, not doubt the young are being taught about stealing our eggs.

All the chick's are thriving, Matilda has turned out to be a wonderful mother although she was so clumsy with her eggs breaking four.

The older La Bresse are all gaining weight well, they are now outside in their own run, I think there are just two pullets and the rest are cockerels. I haven't sexed the youngest ones yet but they are not quite two weeks so I will leave it a couple of weeks.
The next batch of Quail are due to hatch this Sunday, hopefully we will get a good hatch as we have an order for fifty birds oven ready and we need about the same amount for ourselves.
The last of our female rabbits, Goldie from last year has now gone to her new home, hopefully pregnant, the new buck Bobby knew exactly what to do and got on with the job very quickly, however today we put our own doe, Flopsey to him and she refused to be mated, she had been plucking herself over the last few days, in fact since we moved the rabbits out into their outside runs, plucking would normally indicate that the doe is pregnant and due to give birth, which in this case is not possible, she just thinks she is, we will try them together again at the weekend.

 On a trip out today taking a friend to the airport we were delighted to see Cowslips growing along the grass verge, once this beautiful plant could be seen everywhere, now it is  a rare find, we also could not resist taking a photo of some lovely Kingcups growing close by.

Our nearest airport is only a fifteen minute drive from here and it is a very pleasant drive with superb views from the airport grounds, but we seldom drive in that direction, there is a big drive to promote Knock Airport which opens up the West of Ireland to visitors, the airport it's self is still small and friendly, and was the inspiration of Father Horan, there is now a  bronze statue erected in memory of this far seeing priest.

It came as no surprise that the UK voted against the banning of Neonicotinoid pesticides, their current Minister of Agriculture Owen Patterson must be the worst one they have ever had, I was a little surprised that Ireland sat on the fence and abstained on the vote, no doubt not wanting to upset the UK.
 The UK are planning to have referendum on whether so stay in the EU or not, should it not be more of a question for the other member states as to whether they want the UK to remain as part of the EU, after all the UK has refused to be European in just about every way, they still talk in miles,  pounds and ounces, they cherry pick from EU regulations, abide with what they like and ignore what they don't, and blame the EU for anything that goes wrong. High time Britain was kicked out and become a fully paid up member of the US and become the 51st state.

Back to GMO's

During the past week we have contacted six of the major supermarkets in the UK  regarding their abandonment of sourcing GM free feed for their meat and dairy products, (as far as I am aware we have had no ban on GMs in animal products in Ireland) Out of the six we contacted only two acknowledged our email, and Sainsbury's was the only one to reply. Their answer was far from satisfactory and it seems that they are willing to put their faith in the latest scientific research and the government say so that there are no safety issues. The scientific research is not independent, it is carried out by the GM companies themselves and when it comes to the likes of Monsanto I would not believe anything that they say including that the  sky is blue and the earth is round.
Below is part of the email we received from Sainsbury's.
The latest scientific research and current Government advice is that GM ingredients do not present any risks to human health.  We do of course acknowledge the concerns of our customers, and therefore do not permit the use of GM crops, ingredients, additives or derivatives in any Sainsbury's own label food, drink, pet food, dietary supplements or floral products.
This is merely part of their published press statement so in fact we have not had the curtsy of a personal reply. I also find it very strange that Sainsburys do not allow GM's in their own brand animal food.

It would seem to us that these supermarkets are working as a cartel which I believe is illegal, it seems strange that they should have all changed their policy's at the same time.We are lucky, we have land and grow  most of what we eat, including eggs and poultry, we now have a barter with a new friend for trout in exchange for feathers and plants, and the few additional items that we have to buy such as milk and butter are Organic, but for people who live in towns and have no access to a garden to grow in and a limited budget their options are limited.
During the last two decades food intolerances have increased, as has obesity and certain types of cancer, the powers that be blame the obesity on junk food and no one would disagree that junk food can cause obesity but there are many people who do not eat junk food yet are obese, as no monitoring has ever been carried out on humans who eat GMO's it is impossible to prove that these are the cause, although when fed to animals numerous health problems arise. Why should people suddenly start having food allergies when they have not chanced their diets? Why should there be an increase in certain cancers? The only think that has really changed in the last two decades is the introduction of GM's into peoples diets.
If the day ever comes that these food stuffs are PROVED safe to eat I might reconsider my views, but as this is very unlikely to happen I think I'm, on a safe bet.

Things are moving at last in the garden, the main crop potatoes are up,  the broad beans  are in bloom, and the small transplanted cauliflowers and Brussels are doing fine. Peas and French beans are through in the tunnel, and the early potatoes have had their first earthing up.

 All of our seed is Organic including the potatoes, the same variety as we have grown for the last few years, as there are blight resistant potatoes available I wonder why the Irish Dept of Ag, decided to grow GM potatoes on their research site in Carlow although people protested against this once again the people were ignored.
On the 25th May there is to be a world wide protest against Monsanto, the one in Ireland will be held in Dublin, starting at the Peace Garden at 2 pm and ending at the Dept of Agriculture. I have posted a link .
http://march-against-monsanto.com/
    

1st day of summer. Happy Beltaine.

Today is the first day of summer according to the Celtic calendar, and the weather did not let us down.  We awoke to a bright warm sunny day and it has remained so, in fact the sun was hot.

The trees seemed to have come into leaf overnight, and the primroses and dandelions seem to be brighter. The grass is growing , everything is bright , clean and new life is around us everywhere.

 A horse in a nearby meadow had her fowl yesterday, it is a beautiful little thing, all legs and shy, we stopped to take a photo of it, it immediately went to mum for reassurance.


Matilda with three of her chicks.

Our live stock has multiplied with a total of twenty four new chicks in the last week, eighteen from the incubator, 100% success and six out of the remaining eight eggs from Matilda. We now have a break for a couple of weeks before anything else is due. 


At last some good news from the EU, they have imposed a moratorium of three years on the use of pesticides containing Neonicotinoids despite protests from the UK and Germany and the  agri chemical companies.
 However the UK still plans to plant more GM wheat come the Autumn despite the people saying NO. The peoples voice is clearly no longer heard or counted.

Eighteen balls of fluff.

We went to a neighbouring town today for a country market which is held every year on the 1st of May, we were hoping to get some fertile duck eggs for our other broody duck, but the people selling had no idea  what type of duck or even hens eggs they had, there was a lot of poultry for sale, mainly mixed breeds, and a lot of elderly cocks, most were in very poor condition even the chicks and ducklings, we left without buying anything and were very disappointed that apparently no effort had been made by the sellers to bring good stock with them.
   

I will not comply, will you?

We don't accept this. Let us keep our seeds EU!

The forbidden seed!
 How many here know that the EU is preparing legislation that will make it illegal to grow crops that are not on a list of approved seeds? A list that currently 60% dominated by big corporations like Monsanto, AstraZeneca, Bayer and others? Today, there are three lists, one for professional growth, one of the endangered species and one for amateur cultivation. The latter two should be removed.
The pros list are basically only hybrids - which means that you can not take next year's seed from his crop.
 Furthermore, it not only be forbidden to sell other seeds than those already mentioned, but also to grow. "File sharing" in the area of seeds will become a criminal act. This means that people be even less able to influence what you eat, when you can not even decide what to grow.
 It also means that the varieties that are historically interesting will disappear, even varieties that can withstand our climate, because the market is too small for the majors to be interesting.
This means that poor people who live off what they grow is referred to in the seedtrades discretion in terms of pricing, which can be costly where there are few players. What do we think about this? Source: Nordgen, Alnarp, association SESAM English translater Monica Ramsten
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/We_dont_accept_this_Let_us_keep_our_seeds_EU/?tTLFjbb

Today is hatching day, we are not sure how many chicks Matilda has hatched, she started out with twelve eggs but we know she broke four, I have seen three chicks poking their heads out from under her so far so hopefully there are more, we will just have to wait and see when she brings them out in her run. I tried to get a good photo of them but only managed to capture one, tomorrow maybe!

The tunnel is now a mass of white blossom from the strawberries and the bumble bees have arrived at last to do their thing, judging by the amount of bloom there should be plenty of fruit this year to make strawberry jam , we are down to our last few pots.
I spotted one set peach today, hopefully there will be more than just one, the tree was a mass of blossom which we carefully hand pollinated with a feather, we might pop the tree outside if we get a

decent summer at the moment it is in the sunroom which is highly perfumed by the freesias' that I planted into pots, they have done very well and we have a mass of blooms on them, purple whites and yellow, lovely.

Despite the spring being so very late this year we still manage to find food in the garden to eat, it's offerings today are purple spouting kale! and rhubarb.

And finally Tess, she gets bigger every day, she always has to have something in her mouth which she loves to present to us, unfortunately she has now learnt to get up on the dining room chairs to give us her 'offerings'. She is a very bright dog and now knows the signs of us going out, changing our shoes or putting on our coats, she then heads straight to her bed in the utility room, this is not something that we have taught her to do, she just does it. Possible it's her way of saying she does not want to go out in the car, we have only taken her in it once and she was a good as gold but has refused to get in it since.

Propaganda and more bad news.

Vandana Shiva: “…Patents are granted for inventions. Seed is not invented. But the only reason why you take a patent is to collect royalties. Royalites meaning cost for your seed. Royalties meaning seed that is renewable by its very nature is made non-renewable.”
Vandana Shiva has long been a heroine of mine, she has fought long and hard against the corporate take over of her country by Monsanto, in a recent BBC Hardtalk interview with Sarah Montague she put forward the reasons why so many Indian farmers have committed suicide and once again, thousands of people are dying in India and throughout the world through starvation.
 When India gained it's independence from it's masters, Britain, in 1948 , under the land reform act the people were given 2 ha of land so they could grow their own food and support themselves, this is called subsistence farming, farmers grew a variety of crops, no mono culture, so more bio diversity. If one crop failed they had others to fall back on, and it was sustainable, but once again they find themselves enslaved  to the agro chemical giant  Monsanto.
Montague tried to argue that the production of cotton has increased by 100% since the introduction of GM cotton and that the farmers have never had it so good and now can export their product. It was very clear from the interview that she was nothing more than a mouth piece for the propaganda machine which is the BBC. At one time the BBC was looked up to for fair reporting, how things have changed.
It might be true to say that the overall production of cotton is up by 100% but that is very different from saying that yields have increased. If you have 2ha of land growing eight crops, and then change that to 50% of the land growing just one crop you have an immediate increase of  400%, and in the case of cotton you reduce your food crops by 37.5%. This clearly is unsustainable.
One way or another GM crops are being forced onto people, even when they say repeatedly they do no wish to eat them.
As you may have heard, in the past two weeks many UK supermarkets abandoned long-standing policies on GM animal feed. The move, said to be based on the difficulty in sourcing non-GM feed, flies in the face of the UK Government's own data showing consumers want GM out of the food chain entirely, as well as our GfK/NOP poll results showing shoppers are willing to pay more to avoid GM.
GM Freeze is surprised that Marks & Spencer is among the companies making this change, as it has long had a strong and admirable stand on this issue. The Co-op has also changed its policy.
Please see our action here and tell supermarkets you are very unhappy with this move away from non-GM fed products.

Please also remember that if you use FaceBook or Twitter it is extremely helpful for you to use these to direct people to this action to help build our strength. The url to use for this is http://www.gmfreeze.org/actions/1/

We are fortunate in being able to grow most of what we eat, and what we can't grow we are fortunate enough to be able to afford Organic, but many people are not, but they should have a choice of what they wish to eat.
 With the Supermarkets saying it's too hard to source GM free feed for their meats and eggs they are giving in to the GM companies, if this happens they will have won.
People must fight back, this is the road to total disaster , and world domination by the agro chemical companies.

Slowly catching up.

At last things are happening in the garden, the parsnips and carrots have all germinated, the carrots were only planted last week end so we are very please with them. The first cauliflowers and calabrese are planted out and also the leeks and Brussel sprouts, the  onions are looking quite good, Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes planted. All the raised beds are prepared ready for the next lot of seedlings, and runner bean trenches prepared ready for planting out the bean plants next month. The garlic however is a failure, it survived the winter fine, it was cloched most of the time but as soon as the cover was removed the wild birds moved in and have destroyed them, next year we will try them under netting.
The wind has abated a little,  it is still windy but southerly winds now instead of the cold east wind that we had been having.
Buds are beginning to swell on the fruit trees but no sign of any bees, we might have to hand pollinate the fruit trees unless the bees appear soon.
Spring certainly has been very slow in coming this year, we still have daffodils just making an appearance, they will probably  be in bloom well into May.

A visit to a friends house this week  enabled us to exchange a doz eggs for a tray of celery seedlings and a bag full of mushrooms, the barter system is still alive and well here. It's always nice to be able to give as well as receive and eggs are something we have no shortage of.
The first of our chick's are doing well they are now three weeks old, I think there are four cockerels and just two pullets, the next eggs are due to hatch at the end of next week, these are under a broody hen who has been a bit careless and managed to break three of the eggs.
We have a Muscovy duck who is sitting well on twelve eggs although  she still has Jersey Giant hens trying to share her nest despite us having bought a new house for them they have so far ignored it, tonight they will have to be forced into their new accommodation.

At last we have got our strimmer back , the chap that repaired it has returned it as good as new although it took him some time to find the right parts, it is over twenty years old, but a good one. this has enabled Simon to get some of the lower field strimmed ready to plant the new trees which are due to arrive later this week. While he was working there he found a clump of frogspawn,  laid in the middle of the field, he carefully scooped it onto a plastic bag and brought it round to the small stream at the back of the house. Why a frog would lay her eggs in a field is anyone's guess, maybe it was the heavy rain that we had and she could not hold back any longer.